any automatically operated machine that replaces human effort, though it may not resemble human beings in appearance or perform functions in a humanlike manner. By extension, robotics is the engineering discipline dealing with the design, construction, and operation of robots. The concept of artificial humans predates recorded history (see automaton), but the modern term robot derives from the Czech word robota (“forced labour” or “serf”), used in Karel Čapek ’s play R.U.R. (1920). The play’s robots were manufactured humans, heartlessly exploited by factory owners until they revolted and ultimately destroyed humanity. Whether they were biological, like the monster in Mary Shelley ’s Frankenstein (1818), or mechanical was not specified, but the mechanical alternative inspired generations of inventors to build electrical humanoids. The word robotics first appeared in Isaac Asimov ’s science-fiction story Runaround (1942). Along with Asimov’s later robot stories, it set a new standard of...